It was Benny, though, who got off the best line. He did it with a Jess-like directness, though in a shakier voice.
“What are you going to feed her, Jess? She’s going to have to eat, you know. Sooner or later. We can’t just stop at a pet shop and buy her crickets.”
That made Sophie laugh out loud, which caused Jess to glare into the rearview mirror. Benny turned again, too, and so, sun and all, Sophie rolled up on her hip on the seat, propping on one elbow as Jess’s tiny top inched up her side.
“Don’t look at her,” Jess snapped. And then, to Sophie, she added, “Shut up. Lie down. How long?”
“What? I didn’t say any—”
“How long until you have to eat?”
“Oh. Hmm,” Sophie murmured. But she didn’t say anything else, because suddenly, she couldn’t. Instead, she was transfixed by the memory—specifically, of the smell—of the mini-mart where she’d eaten last. The place where she’d … Finished, as the Whistler had put it. She’d been covered in blood then, too. Her own, again, just like now. Although some of the blood, that time, had belonged to the deer that Natalie had plowed through with the GTO. The reek she was remembering now was mostly that, but also old Slurpee, reheated hot dog meat. And the counter guy, even from across the store, air-guitaring away to “More Than a Feeling” in his logo-less uniform cap, at the moment she’d caught his eye. After that, he hadn’t air-guitared much; mostly, he’d fluttered like a butterfly in a net as she’d beckoned him around the counter, eased him to his knees, rested him against her thighs. She’d been able to smell him then, all right, as she’d gently removed his cap, smoothed his hair, which was thick and dark. “You are lovely,” she’d whispered over him, again and again, like a blessing, right up until the moment she’d ended him. Drained him like a Big Gulp.
Was this remorse she was feeling now?
Shouldn’t there have been more of it?
“Sophie. How long?”
“Not for a while,” she said softly, her fingers on her severed legs and her eyes on the seat back. “At least a few weeks. I think.”
“Okay,” said Jess. “That’s how long you have to live. Or convince me you should.”
“Right. Got it. Thanks, God.”
“That’s right. That’s exactly how you should think of me. Except that I am kinder than any God you will ever meet.”
Probably true, Sophie thought, and this time kept her grin to herself. Because I will never meet Him.
That was the last time any of them spoke until well after dusk. Even Eddie apparently slept. A canopy of shadows slid all the way over the car and stayed there, and Sophie opened her eyes. She could feel her skin, hands, her whole body unfolding into the twilight like one of those ghost-white, gorgeous plants at the nursery where her mother had once managed to hold a job for three years straight: night-blooming jasmine, night queen flower.
Her hand had never left her legs, but now it stretched all the way down to her poor battered knees, and so bumped against the paper bags Jess had stashed against the seat back. The car was crawling through traffic, barely moving. If she lifted her head, Sophie could see the reflection of Jess’s face glowering in the windshield. Benny’s face seemed to have frozen in a rictus smile. Possibly, he was mulling everything Jess had told him. Possibly, he was just in pain. Possibly, he was still trying to keep himself from turning around again.
The paper bags clattered quietly when Sophie rustled them. Her fingers crawled over their open mouths, slipped inside.
“What are you doing?”
You really had to give it to the woman, Sophie thought. She missed nothing. “You’re amazing, Jess. You really are.”
“Sophie, what are you doing?”
“What is all this?” Digging deep, Sophie pulled a handful of cassettes out of the nearest bag. “Whoa.”
“Get your hands off those. Those are Natalie’s things. They’re all I have left to remind me of—”
“I made these for her,” Sophie snapped, and it was as though she’d wrung Jess’s neck, the way that woman gurgled to silence. Sophie held up a tape, opened the case, slid out the J-card. “I made these,” she whispered. Then she whistled. “Man, look at this playlist.”
“You didn’t make all of them,” Jess muttered.
That was true, as it turned out. The next tape Sophie examined was labeled NATALIE AND JOE, 1989. And the next: NATALIE LADY JANE GRAY, 2002, whatever that meant.
Sophie dumped those cassettes back in the bag and returned to the J-card she’d found. She’d written out these song titles more than a decade ago, drawn the little yellow and purple flowers along the border. A lifetime ago, as it had turned out.
Two lifetimes.
Not including her Roo.
Shaking her head hard, she made herself focus on the playlist. Her voice came out almost as a taunt, and she didn’t care. “Seriously, Jess. Listen to this progression. ‘Eve of Destruction,’ followed by ‘Radiation Vibe,’ followed by ‘Heart of Glass.’ I was thirteen when I made this mix. Natalie was the music snot, but I should have been the DJ. I could have—”
“Why?” Jess erupted, pounding the steering wheel and stomping on the brakes as she swiveled all the way around. Horns blared behind them, but Jess paid no attention. “I mean it, Sophie. Explain it to me. You were good girls. You were such good girls. You took care of each other. You took care of your responsibilities. You made your mistakes, and then made good worlds out of them. How could you be so reckless? How you could you do that? How could you do it to your children? In the backseat of Natalie’s fucking car? With a total stranger?”
“He was a pretty hot stranger,” Sophie murmured. Way down under her ribs, something new was sprouting, called up by the heat in Natalie’s mother’s voice.
“That’s what you’ve got, Sophie? That’s your response? He was hot?”
“Well, he was. At least, I think he was. To tell you the truth, I have trouble remembering. So did your daughter, by the way.”
“Great. Thank you, Soph. Appreciate that. It’s a comfort to know that both of you were too smashed even to notice the moment that defined the rest of both of your lives. And your children’s lives. And my life. And the people you hurt or are going to hurt and—”
“I wasn’t that smashed,” Sophie said. The song titles on the J-card beat against her eyes, buzzed in her ears like whispered words through a tin can. “Come on Eileen.” “Sisters of Mercy.” “Cat Scratch Fever.”
Okay, that last progression was a little weird.
Horns honked. Lights from the turnpike tollbooth up ahead crawled over the hood toward the windshield. Sophie saw a gray-haired cashier leaning out of her little enclosed capsule, peering down into each passing car.
Abruptly, she scrabbled upright, shoving at the seat in front of her. “Holy shit, help me get my legs.”
“What?”
“Are you kidding? Jess, what do you think that woman’s going to see? You want to explain this to her? Give me my fucking legs.”
“Help her get her legs,” Jess snapped at Benny. She stopped the car dead again, ignoring the cannonade of honks as she leaned sideways, pretending to rummage for cash or something.
Somehow, Benny struggled out of his seat belt, gasping in pain as he got himself twisted around and up on his knees. “I can’t reach,” he said, stretching his arms over the back.
“Me, either,” said Sophie, trying to balance on one arm so she didn’t tip all the way over and roll into the well on top of her legs. Her head hit Benny’s. “Jesus Christ, hurry up,” she said. She felt his breath on her shoulder as both of them lunged forward. His head practically buried itself in her chest. For one moment, both of them were almost laughing. She was actually laughing.
Then her left leg popped up, as though it had taken action on its own, and settled in her hands. She slid it into place, turned it slightly, felt the tendons catch. They didn’t hold—not yet—but bumped against each other, almost seemed to clamp together. Like garter-
belt straps.
“Ooh,” she said.
Benny had her other leg, now; he jammed that into her chest as though it were an oar and she an alligator.
Which she had been, come to think of it, remembering her night with Natalie in the Okefenokee.
And that had occurred all of three nights ago? Four? How was that even …
“Hurry,” Jess hissed.
Ignoring that, Sophie slid the right leg home, settled back, and closed her eyes. Jess was leaking again. It really was more like leaking than crying. Sophie could tell she was doing it by the way she was murmuring, the phrases she kept repeating like little prayers: “You were such good girls. Such good girls.”
“Wipe your face,” Sophie whispered. “Smile.”
“Don’t you tell me what—”
“Sssh. Oh.”
Sometime later, as thunderstorms rolled out of the dark over the raked fields around them, Jess parked at an Arby’s. While she was inside changing Eddie and getting food, Sophie popped the lock on her door, slid out of her legs—which hadn’t reattached, though she thought now that maybe, eventually, if she could lie still long enough, they might—and swung down onto the pavement. Throwing her arms wide and tilting back her head, she waited for the world to drench her.
For once, it obliged. Fat drops of rain filled the too-warm night. Sophie let them gush through her hair, down her neck into Jess’s shirt. For no good reason, she remembered another thunderstorm, one she’d spent lying in her pull-down bed at the back of the one-room studio she and her mother had rented the summer after they had had to sell the trailer. All through that storm, she’d lain quiet, listening to her mother fuck some shadow who would never have a face, not even for her mother. I am—we are—barely even here, Sophie remembered thinking then. We are drums for the rain to sound, ears to hear it.
“What are you doing?” Jess snapped as she raced past, shielding Eddie from the rain with her coat. “Stop it.”
Sophie opened her eyes, and only then saw the farmer guy in the parked pickup beside them. He was a remarkably cute farmer guy, with dark hair all crisscrossed like a bird’s nest, eyes silvery and shiny as the streetlights at the edge of the parking lot. He was staring through his open window at her. At the stump of her. Her stump-ness, it was clear, mattered not in the least to him, and wasn’t what he was staring at.
“Whoops,” Sophie said, and gave the farmer-guy a smile slow and shy and genuine enough to hurt him.
Jess started the car. “Sophie, if you don’t get in here right now…”
“Sorry,” Sophie called to the farmer, gesturing over her shoulder. “Gotta go.”
But just as she swung herself back into her seat, Jess shut the engine down again. Then she started smacking the steering wheel. She used her open hands at first, both together, but then her fingers curled into fists and stopped moving in unison and simply pummeled the wheel, unleashing staccato horn blasts that sounded increasingly like chickens being strangled as Jess went on hammering.
“SHIT,” she was saying. “Shit, and shit, and shit, shit, shit.”
“Jess,” Benny tried.
“SHIT,” she snarled, and slammed a fist so hard into the center of the wheel that she cracked the plastic.
“Jess. Hon, you need to—”
“I need a job. That’s what I need.” She wasn’t really talking to Benny, and certainly not to Sophie, and the sight of Jess like this caused Sophie a surprising pang of … something. Sympathy, almost? Maybe? Because apparently, Jess was as alone inside herself as Sophie felt. Had always, every second of her life, felt, except when she’d been with Natalie.
You, too, Jess? Sophie wondered.
If that were true, maybe she and Jess were more alike than either one of them would ever have wanted to admit.
“We need fruit,” Jess blurted.
Benny almost laughed at that, but caught himself. “Fruit?”
“And dental floss.”
“Yes, but—”
“We need money, Benny. We’re going to run out of money so fast. And we need a place to stay. We can’t just run. We can’t just stick Eddie in a car seat for the rest of his childhood until he goes to college or runs away. We’ve got to … restart our lives. Somehow.”
Thunder boomed. Eddie squawked, screamed, and Sophie reached out and touched his little hand. His squirmy little hand.
And Jess saw that, noted it in the rearview mirror, opened her mouth to tell Sophie to get off. But she didn’t.
“You’re right,” Benny was saying, in that stupid man-voice caring men always thought would help. Not that Sophie had known too many caring men, but the ones she had all used that stupid voice.
“We can’t go home, Benny. Ever.”
“I know,” Benny said. And then, “Why not?”
If Jess had been paying any more attention, Sophie was pretty sure she would have punched him at that point. But she was still staring into the rain, fists still poised over the steering wheel she’d cracked, as if daring the wheel to heal itself.
“I have to … find us somewhere. Like, now. Get us on a schedule. Find Eddie a school. Get up mornings and … have breakfast.”
“Breakfast?”
“Put on clothes. Find child care for the baby. Go to work. Jesus Christ, Benny, how do people actually go and do that?”
Finally, she went silent. Her fists fell open, and her face dropped down into them. Sophie watched for Jess’s shoulders to start shaking, but they didn’t.
Because she couldn’t allow it, Sophie realized. Even now, clinging to the splintered debris of her life, Jess could control her responses. Because she was Jess. Because she had no other choice.
Going out in the rain had been a mistake, it turned out, because now Jess’s top was wet, and Sophie was freezing. Complaining to Jess about that at this particular moment, Sophie decided, was probably a bad idea. She kept silent, held Eddie’s hand, and shivered.
“Okay,” Jess said, and lifted her head. She leaned over, kissed Benny on the mouth, and turned around. Sophie jerked her hand away from Eddie’s. But Jess looked only at the child, who was no longer screaming. “Ssh,” she said. And then, “Okay. One thing at a time. Let’s … we’ll find somewhere. We just will. Today, tomorrow. Somewhere small and sweet. Where we can be small and sweet.”
Sophie watched Jess hold on to that thought, swing from it like a little spider on the first strand of a newly restarted web. She watched Jess brush Eddie’s face, not even glance at Sophie’s, turn away, squeeze her man’s fuzzy hand, and start the car. She let Jess drive them all the way to the edge of the parking lot. Then she said, “He’ll come for you, you know.”
Jess’s whole body bucked, as though Sophie had leapt on her back again. Her hands came off the wheel, waved in the air, and Sophie thought of little spider legs. Poor little Jess-spider, who knew nothing else to do but spin webs in corners that could not hold them.
“Who, Sophie? Who will come?”
“Who do you think? You’re not a moron.”
Mostly, Jess had control of herself, now. She’d gotten her hands back on the wheel, and her mouth had stopped twitching. But not her eyes. Not yet. “Why would he do that? He won’t. If he was the slightest bit interested in me, he could have killed me right there on the beach.”
Sophie considered that, and shook her head. “Don’t think so. Nope. That wouldn’t have been…”
There was a pause. A long one. Benny, horrified, was crouching against his door, watching both of them, so paralyzed by it all it was as if he wasn’t even there. Eddie was wriggling in his car seat, agitated by the thrumming engine without motion, the perpetually rising voices. And for Sophie—just for one, insane second—it was almost like being back in Jess’s trailer again, gossiping about boys, bitching about teachers or Sophie’s mom, drowning out the drone of Jess’s perpetual baseball games on the radio with their taunting and their arguing and their laughter.
Minus the gossiping, of course. And the bitching, an
d the baseball games, and the laughter. And Jess’s daughter.
Abruptly, she turned, staring straight into Eddie’s eyes. There was no doubt or even mystery about it: she could see Natalie’s ghost—or her spirit—or just her—in there. There she was, whole and hard and bright and Natalie. And for that instant, all Sophie wanted to do was grab Jess’s hand, tug her around, let her see this, too. Share this sight with her.
“How do you know he’ll come?” Jess whispered, sounding almost as if she felt it, too, this closeness, this memory of closeness, whatever it was Sophie was almost sure she was feeling.
“Actually, Jess, in all honesty, I have no idea what he’ll do.”
“That’s what I thought.” Jess started to turn away.
“But even if he doesn’t,” said Sophie, stopping her as surely as if she’d grabbed her by the throat, “are you really just going to leave him out there? That monster? To do … this?” She started to gesture, then couldn’t even decide where to direct the motion: Toward her severed legs? Broken Benny? Orphaned Eddie? Back the way they’d come toward Concerto Woods, where their children lay buried? “Are you going to let him do this to somebody else? You, of all people, are going to let that happen?” Her last and deftest comment came as an afterthought. “Is that what good girls do?”
This time, Jess barely even looked up, though she appeared to be crying yet again. “Right. Good idea. Having lost my beautiful daughter, I should risk her son in some crazy … What are you even … Sophie, we can’t fight that. And you know what, I don’t even believe you want to. You’re up to something. We cannot fight that.”
“You can’t,” Sophie said. “I can.”
Jess did look up, then. She pointedly avoided meaningful glances at Sophie’s severed legs or their stumps. She didn’t laugh, either. Classy Jess. “Even if you could. Why would you want to, Sophie? Is that really what you want?”
“Want,” Sophie murmured. Such a small word for the force that seemed to drive everyone Sophie had ever known to destroy anything they’d ever had. In her lap, her hands went on toying with the cassettes she’d found, each one imprinted with Sophie-and-Natalie music. With Natalie’s voice.
Good Girls Page 14
